Be Excellent To Each Other

Well that's just a sure fire way of getting a POTW nom. Not from me though!

You can tell someone's on holiday.

Also, £50 says I outlive WTB.

I dunno. Craster's cooking at the cottage, and WTB is being lame and not committing to coming.

I'll still take a bet on it... it's just about concentrating really hard on remembering to keep breathing really, he's bound to get distracted sooner rather than later and my perseverance will win out!

After I did the workaround detailed it's a lot less deadly quiet all the time.

Warning : Contains new areas.

They're all new areas to me, apologies for any inadvertent spoilers.

I don't mind - I've already seen it, and it's not particularly spoilery, but thought it worth flagging up anyway for those who cared.

Speaking of spoilers. In terms of awesome rewards for beating up big things

Does it do anything else?!

There's a special mini-game where you try and flick it onto the finger of bad men.

Not according to the description. It may have some hidden quality, but I doubt I'm going to find it. Will probably see if anyone else has found a use for it when I finish the new content, which doesn't seem that far away from the impression I'm getting.

You have to wear the ring at all times or it is too easy.

Easy mode? Not needed. A plot, however...

Hey! I liked the "plot".

You didn't at the time.


I tell you what'd improve every single boss fight in this game by a factor of a million. This.

There was a plot?

"Ring the bell!"
"Er...why?"
"Um. Dunno. I'll just giggle a bit."
"OK, done that."
"Guess what? There's only another bell! Go ring that one, too."
"*Sigh*"

It's not until you're about halfway through that any kind of plot becomes apparent, and what's there is weird and disjointed. It certainly seems to be the case that they came up with a load of cool areas and fights, then spent a week or so scrabbling around for something to link them together.

Not that I found the lack of a plot to be much of a bother, personally.

I liked the storytelling.

Story, lore and legend dealt out through setting, a few lines from characters and inscriptions on weapons and armour.








Oh and a big fucking snake dog.

If you didn't notice a plot until half-way through the game you weren't picking up on the clues and you obviously weren't reading the item descriptions, which is where the bulk of the lore is held. I loved the way they told the story. They left it for you to discover, on the whole, rather than pretending to be a film. It was fantastically "old school" in that respect.

Oh, there was tons of lore. Lore is backstory though, not plot.

The "plot" is only apparent if you're actively devouring the lore. Although undoubtedly it's a minimalistic plot.

Christ it's like Retro Gamer in here.

Most plots are [minimalist]:

Robocop - Cop dies, becomes robot cop, kills baddies who deadid 'im.
Jack and Jill - Sandler shits in a DVD case and sells it to us.

If you can't sum up a plot in two lines, you're not trying hard enough.

At the very least it's gaming related!

Yup. New content done complete

"Stop playing it wrong."

You can play it however you want! But complaining about problems that only exist if you're ignorant of the way the game was designed to be played is going to result in someone explaining to you how those complaints can be addressed.

Bedsides, Craster said he wasn't arsed about the "lack" of plot anyway. But I still disagree with him on that.

Quite, I wasn't complaining. But there's no plot, you cock-faced, fuck-headed, shit-featured belmwad.

Except there is. It's got a start, a middle and an end.

You can't make a 60+ hour game and apply typical storytelling to it though. It wouldn't work so instead it's glacially teased out.

You don't realise you are the chosen undead guy. You realise. You have to kill the five bad guys. You do. The End.

Now, is it so far removed from, say, Lord of the Rings? You are the chosen one. Get ring to volcano. You do. They made three books and three films outta that shit.

Get ring to volcano makes sense. Ring this bell then ring this bell, why?, because, does not. Yes, towards the end, plot appears - but the first half is gapingly plotless.

Right. The entire plot comes out of the mouth of one random dying dude. Also, the Bell of Awakening? It doesn't do anything at all. You have to ring the second bell before you learn anything about what's going on. One conversation fragment doesn't make a plot.

Like I say, I don't think the game suffers for the lack of it, but it's quite clearly barely there at all.

Phh Bible. Man created. World ends. Nothing there. Made a mind control empire outta that shit!

This is fun!

The plot in this utter dogshit of a game is like watching a Mime artist act out a rough outline of an episode of Home and Away.

It's a very good game.

How dare you attempt to criticise an aspect of a game which is completely above criticism.

Play it first you massive cunt.

But also, nobody is saying it's above criticism. It's a fucking argument between two parties with opposing views. We'll defend it as long as you attack it.

Also that random dying dude just happened to save you from imprisonment and going hollow.

I beat him up. There's still barely a plot. Doesn't really matter, but (as mentioned) Dark Souls is above all this petty naysaying.

Or something.

I don't think I'd like an easy mode. I liked the sense of exclusive accomplishment in beating the world that would be marred by any old spack hands being able to fumble through it.

An 'easy' mode would make me consider playing this because I'm pretty sure I'd get too frustrated to enjoy it as is. Actually, a demo would be enough for me to see if I can get into it but I wouldn't touch it without some way to give it a shot first.

What I'd want from an easy mode isn't specific changes to difficulty so much as a bonfire right outside each boss fight. That'd help a lot for me. The bonfire warping they've added to the PC version sounds appealing too.

That might be what I need to return to the game, in fact.

I don't think the game is "difficult" anyway. The basic combat certainly isn't once you know what you are doing. It's the punishment for your mistakes that makes it tough. As Rich says, more bonfires would probably be enough to make it easier.

Oh, and bonfire warping is already a thing. It unlocks later in the game. The PC version just allows you to warp to more bonfires than the console version.

Bonfires outside boss fights would be a definate improvement in some areas.

Bonfire warping is in the console game after Anor Londo which I thought was just the right time for it. Have they included from the start then?

Edit: Oh, I see.

Aye, true, the idea of being kicked back to redo big stretches of the game when you die (which is the impression I've picked up from this thread?) is another thing that puts me off it.

You're missing out. It should be cheaps somewhere, I'd guess, to take a punt on such a divisive game. Plus, if you didn't like it you could come in here, moan and get in a fight!

Yeah. I can see why folk would hate that, and in fact I normally would too, but I just think it works in this game. The tension it creates is brilliant.

But I'm all for an easy mode if it means more people will get to enjoy it. Provided they don't mess with the "normal" difficulty - in this or future Souls titles.

No easy, only hate.